Morris Island Lightkeeper's House
comingtee-art

Morris Island Lightkeeper's House

Regular price $500.00 $0.00 Unit price per

This 16 X 20" acrylic painting is taken from a photograph prior to being taken down and moved board by board and rebuilt elsewhere to save it from being destroyed by the enormous erosion caused by the Jetties.

The lighthouse manager and his family lived right on the ocean, isolated from the city and he had a highly important job keeping the light lit so as to guide vessels to the south end of the inlet to avoid the dangerous sand bars that stretched from Sullivan's Island.

Once the jetties were built in the 1880's, a deep channel was cut by the strong tides, keeping the sand from clogging the entrance.

Sand moves down the coast from north to south and therefore the renourishment from Sullivan's Island was cut off to Morris Island afterwards causing Morris Island to rapidly disappear. 

When my father, born in 1918, was young, his father took him and his brother to visit the lighthouse and the keeper's adjacent house which were still intact but endangered by the advancing ocean caused by the erosion.

Now , of course, the Lighthouse itself is out in the ocean revealing how much island has been lost.

The remaining lighthouse is the third one placed on the south end of Morris Island. Storms and wars have resulted in destruction of the previous lighthouses; the locals did not want enemy ships to find their way into the channel in previous centuries.